London visit: Twining’s Tea

Twining’s is a very old brand of tea which has its original store from the 18^th century on the strand in London. Since I love both tea and the twining’s brand especially I went to go see it. The store is located at 219 the strand; I got off the tube at temple and then you have to go to the right (away from King’s college; if you pass a large church and then the college you are in the wrong direction) down the strand and you will hit a small storefront with a hanging sign designating it as twining’s. The store is tiny; but not as small as you might think. It is both narrow and long. The store was decently busy when I was there on a Friday at about 4 so I’d imagine it’ll be busier on the weekend and get really cramped. The prices at this location are decent; about the same as you’d get at Tesco and cheaper than sold at posh retailers like Harrods.  The selection is better than grocery stores; they have so many tea varieties in loose leaf, bag, and limited edition.  They also have coffee, hot chocolate, and some tea accessories. The tins were especially tempting and not bad at 5 pounds; the regular boxes of 20 were like 2.50.  I couldn’t decide on a variety and I didn’t really need more tea so I settled on getting a few loose tea bags (15 for 2.25; I was with two friends so we each got 5) and a little tea pot shaped plate that you lay your tea bag on that was a good deal at a mere 3 pounds.

The place is not very relaxing though because of the sheer amount of people shoving in and the cramped shelves holding the tea. They did have little bottles of tea you could smell though. The employees were okay; they were visible enough that they could answer questions, but didn’t bother you if you were browsing.  My only problem was that they had some pots of tea sitting out for samples, but didn’t offer them to that many people. The lady at the counter only offered it twice to old people that were standing right up at the table.  My friend and I were standing in that section of the store because it was less busy as we waited for our other friend to make a decision, but we were never offered tea. She really should have been offering the tea to everyone that came near her station.

Overall, It was a good place to go to get a wide variety of teas for a decent price and being n such an old being was cool. Unfortunately, this old building also means that it was cramped and not very relaxing, and I feel that they need to offer more people tea samples to drink.